


The Next Right Thing

by PrairieDawn



Series: Welcome to 1951 [11]
Category: MASH (TV), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: F/M, Klingon Mind Sifter, Klingons, M/M, Prisoner of War, Vomiting, homophobic slur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:08:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23745088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: The members of the 4077th left behind send the Federation distress signal and try to escape before the Klingons arrive.  They fail.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Series: Welcome to 1951 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1033128
Comments: 123
Kudos: 126





	1. In which Radar loses his nerve

"Radar, you there, son?" Potter's voice on the line was thin and laced with static. 

Radar leaned into the mike. "Right here, Colonel. How you guys doing?"

"Slow and steady. These roads have more holes than Klinger's stockings. How's our patient?"

"Cap'n Hawkeye says he's doing okay. Wiggled his toes and everything." Radar didn't like them all traveling the roads. It was risky, they could be captured, or hit mines, why, anything could happen. So he tried, without success, not to think about it.

"Good, good. Now you don't stick around any longer than you have to."

"We don't plan on it." He tried to think of something to say that would ease the crawling dread in his gut. "You be careful, sir."

"I'll check in again in an hour." The radio clicked off.

Radar rubbed his beanie over his hair nervously. He felt like he was mired in smoke and sparks, suffocating under the weight of the coming storm. If he had the choice, he'd have gone to sit with his animals for a while, but they were all gone, even Shadow, who was hitching a ride to Seoul with Kellye. The worm farm was still running, but as useful as worms were, they weren't exactly cuddly.

"You okay, Radar?" Klinger said, his voice muffled around his cigar.

Radar shrugged. "Not really."

"Coffee's ready. I'm taking some to Hawkeye and Houlihan. You should come with."

"I guess." He didn't want to deal with Hawkeye and Houlihan looking to him for some idea of their chances--like he could give them any good news or would give them the bad. But being alone with his thoughts would be worse.

He pushed off from the table to take the tray of cups and K-rats from Klinger, who had managed to find a frilly white apron to wear with his yellow gingham and flower decked straw hat. Klinger collected the carafe of coffee and the sugar and followed a step behind him. It was warmer this morning than it had been all year and muggy, with a late spring scent rising off the muddy ground and lush green plants all around. It was a Korean spring smell, not the same as Iowa, but Radar would take it as a gift regardless. If this had to be his last day on Earth--and something prickled at him there, a line leading into the opaque future, but it slipped his mind quick as a rat in daylight--if it had to be, it was good that it was a pretty day.

The patient, Wilson, lay on a Post Op bed they'd moved into the surgery last night. He lay still as though he were dead, but he was pink from his upraised arm to his exposed toes, and the dandelion yellow glow about him looked more sedated than comatose. "I brought lunch," Radar said, interrupting whatever joke Hawkeye had been in the middle of, judging from the unimpressed look on Major Houlihan's face. "It's just K-rats."

"And I've got coffee!" Klinger shouted behind him.

"Yes, please!" Major Houlihan said, rushing at Klinger so fast Radar was afraid she'd knock him over. Klinger poured four coffees and they all settled into folding chairs. Radar doled out the canned ham and eggs, hard biscuits, and rectangles of dried, compressed fruit.

Radar tucked into the ham and eggs, barely tasting them. Hawkeye held the fruit bar gingerly between two fingers. "What fruit is this anyway?"

Radar shrugged. "Says strawberry. Tastes like apple."

Hawkeye took a minuscule nibble from the corner of the bar. "I'm getting notes of shoe leather, tree bark, banana peel. No apple."

"Do you ever quit?" Major Houlihan complained.

Hawkeye waggled his eyebrows. "You wanna take me out and see?"

She rolled her eyes and held out her mug. "Klinger, I need more coffee if I'm going to be putting up with him all day."

"More dishwater, coming up!" Klinger grinned, but his expression was forced. "Don't forget to tip your waitress."

Hawkeye got up to check Wilson's vital signs. "Chopper still coming at four?"

Radar shrugged his response. 

"You okay, Radar?" Klinger asked.

Radar didn't feel up to talking. He dumped a little more sugar into his coffee and watched the reflection of the bright operating light wobble on its dark surface. There was a knock at the door, and in the seconds between the knock and the door opening without anyone saying, "Come in," Radar realized there was something he had forgotten.

Houlihan leaped to her feet and Klinger leaped in front of her, shouting "Who goes there!" and brandishing his coffee pot like a weapon.

Bedraggled, muddy and with leaves in his hair, Frank Burns staggered through the door and fell to his knees at Klinger's feet. He looked up, saw Klinger's face, and crawled around him to kneel in front of Major Houlihan. "Margaret," he whined, pulling at her clothes. "Margaret, they've treated me so unfairly. Surely you can see that."

"What are you doing here?" Klinger demanded. "You should have bugged out with the MPs."

Frank scrambled to his feet and stuck his chest out at Klinger. "The MPs made me help load the trucks with the privates and corporals. The nerve! I made myself scarce and I guess they forgot about me."

"The doctors and nurses were helping load, too," Radar grumbled into what remained of his coffee.

"Who asked you, you little freak?" Frank sneered at both Radar and Klinger. "It's the two of you ought to be out on your ears--and you! Don't think I've forgotten that you hit me!"

"There's more where that came from, Frank!" Hawkeye snapped.

Frank raised a fist. Houlihan and Klinger both tried to step between them and collided, Klinger's nose bouncing off Houlihan's forehead. For once, the Major didn't screech at the indignity, but kept to her intent while Klinger pinched his nose closed and pointed his face to the ceiling. "Major Burns, Captain Pierce, take it outside. I won't have you endangering the patient."

Hawkeye put his fist down. "He's not worth the trouble."

Radar ducked to the floor to pull out some gauze from the first aid kit for Klinger's bloody nose. Hawkeye took it from him and turned his attention to Klinger. "It doesn't look broken. How's your head, Major?"

She scrubbed at her forehead. "You've got a hard nose, Corporal."

"Why thank you, Major," Klinger said, his voice muffled.

Frank slouched toward the wall to lean against it, arms crossed over his chest, pouting. His eyes followed Hawkeye even though he was talking to the Major. "He just left you here did he? Your fancy commie doctor?"

"Dr. McCoy was ordered to leave. I chose to stay with the patient."

"Too bad for him, I guess." Frank smiled unpleasantly. "Come on, Margaret, can't you see it in your heart to forgive me?"

"Frank, you hit a patient!"

Frank snorted. "He was asking for it. Pansy."

"He's a strategic asset and you could have killed him. If we have any chance of winning the war--"

"Their war is nothing but a pack of lies. They strung us along for weeks, got the gullible little freak to build a big antenna to call the imaginary cavalry to fight an imaginary enemy. They're probably spying for the Chinese."

Radar's stomach dropped. 

Hawkeye took a few steps away from the patient to pace and scrub at his hair, but before he could say a word, Frank took two large steps forward and sucker punched him. Major Houlihan dove for them both. This time Hawkeye wasn't hitting back. Frank got in three or four good hits and a kick that was aiming at Hawkeye's gut but took him in the shins before Houlihan and Klinger, still with gauze hanging half out of his nose, got him pinned to the floor.

"Radar, get on the radio and tell him we've got Frank here and he's making trouble," she said. He turned to jog out the door. As it swung shut, he heard her say, "Now are you going to behave yourself or am I going to have to have Captain Pierce sedate you?"

Birds twittered from the eaves as though everything was fine. Radar's stomach clenched, but walking away from the others didn't make it worse. He hurried back to the tent that held the big transmitter and rung up the portable radio Potter was using in the front of the truck. There was no answer, only static. He tried to tell himself that wasn't unusual, but he didn't seem to want to listen to himself. He tapped his pencil and fiddled with his hat, nervous energy building up inside him until he wanted to pop.

He was going about it all wrong. He ought to think it through. He couldn't focus. Something was wrong and he ought to do something, but he didn't know what the problem was. It was like when Colonel Blake--no, don't think about Henry, just don't--but it was. It was like that. Something bad was happening, he didn't know what and he couldn't stop it and he couldn't raise Colonel Potter on the radio. He imagined he could smell smoke.

He tried again, twice, before he walked back to the surgery. When he forgot to close the door quietly behind him, Hawkeye looked up at the slam to say, "The patient needs his rest, could you keep it down?"

"Sorry, Cap'n," Radar mumbled. Frank sat sullenly on the floor, his head hanging.

"Is someone coming for Frank?" Houlihan said.

Radar drooped onto a chair and buried his face in his hands. "I don't think so, Major." He sniffled. "I couldn't get them on the radio."

"Well isn't that just perfect!"

Hawkeye sat beside him, pine needle prickly with worry. "I'm sure they're just having trouble getting through."

Radar shook his head. 

Hawkeye reached to wrap his arm around Radar's shoulder, drew it away and wrung his hands in the space between his knees. "You, you know, see something?"

"Dunno."

"What are you supposed to do when that happens?" Hawkeye prompted.

Radar shook his head. "Don't want to know."

"Come on, Radar, don't leave me hanging here." Hawkeye stood fast enough to push the chair back with his knees and stalked to the door. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"I don't know, Cap'n Hawkeye."

"Leave him be," Major Houlihan said. "If something's happened to them, there's nothing we can do about it anyway. How much did you give Frank?"

"Enough to keep him groggy for a couple of hours. He'll sober up before we have to get out of here."

"Good," Klinger said. "I don't want to have to carry him. Hey Radar, let's go back to the tent and play cards. Maybe they'll call." He jogged Radar's elbow. "Come on, I'll let you cheat."

A lone chuckle made it out of Radar's throat. Klinger hauled him to his feet, washing lemon yellow over him so he hopped up and away, rubbing his arm. "Maybe they will," he agreed, though he didn't believe it.

*

The sound of chopper blades stirring the afternoon air was less welcome than Hawkeye had expected it to be, even twenty minutes late. Wilson lay prone and sedated on the stretcher. Hawkeye ran his fingers under the straps holding him in place to make sure they were snug but not too tight, even though he trusted Houlihan to do it correctly--hell, he trusted her attention to detail at least as much as he did his own. He jogged around the jeep to hop into the driver's seat, while Houlihan rode in the back with one hand on the stretcher. 

Hawkeye pulled the jeep a close as he dared and took his end, crouching under the chopper blades with air blowing down to ruffle his hair and drive dust into his eyes. Wilson was locked down and covered with the clear plastic shield, and the chopper lifted away and back over the hills toward Seoul, where, if his wiggling toes were any indication, he would walk again. He dropped back into the driver's seat.

Houlihan climbed in more gracefully, her face still turned toward the vanishing chopper. "You think what we did will do any good?"

"We gave him a chance," Hawkeye answered. He turned the car back down the hill toward the tent with the transmitter in it. It had been over four hours since Radar had heard from Colonel Potter. Each time he'd walked across the compound to ask, Radar had been less talkative and paler. While they were operating yesterday, and all this morning, Hawkeye had been able to set aside the likelihood that, like all of them, Wilson was likely to die, and sooner rather than later, given that the seriously injured made poor fodder for labor camps. Now that the young man was no longer in his hands, that probability was a crushing disappointment. "If it wasn't all for nothing."

"Quit talking like that," she said, but her own posture was closed, almost hunched into her seat, her elbows perched on her thighs, her hands balled into fists supporting her chin.

They pulled up to the surgery. Houlihan hopped out of the jeep. "I'll get Frank," she said. "Wait here."

Hawkeye waited until she disappeared through the door, then got out of the jeep and crept up to the doorway anyway, just in case. Houlihan could take care of herself, but Frank was a big man and in his current mental state, even more dangerous than usual. He listened at the door.

Houlihan stood over Frank where he sat, no longer sedated, but still sulking. "We're bugging out, Frank. Come on."

"I'm not riding with Pierce," Frank said, his voice a petulant whine. "He hit me."

"And I'll order him to do it again if you don't come on!" Houlihan snapped.

"You wouldn't!" His face was beginning to pink up with indignation. "Would you?"

"Don't test my patience." She took him by the elbow and led him to the door. 

Hawkeye hurried back to his spot in the jeep to keep from being caught eavesdropping. Houlihan climbed into the back with Frank. He tried to put an arm around her waist and she shrugged him off. He slumped in his seat, not even holding on as they drove over the rutted ground of the yard. Hawkeye pulled up to the tent with the radio and transmitter. "I'll tell them we're ready." He climbed out of the truck.

Radar paced in front of the transmitter. Klinger sat with his feet up on a worktable, their abandoned card game scattered across the ground beneath him. Klinger jumped to his feet. "Radar, it's time."

Radar turned away from Klinger to face Hawkeye. His eyes roved the inside of the tent while his hands wrung the front of his uniform into damp wrinkles. "I can't."

Hawkeye looked at the tangle of repurposed machinery and wire that filled the center of the tent. "What do you mean, you can't? Did you forget what to do? Is something broken?"

"When I send the message, it will bring the, the guys with the--" he wrinkled his forehead. "They'll come here. Find us."

A month ago Hawkeye would have put his arm around Radar. Now that all the rules had changed, he didn't know what to do with his hands. He settled on stuffing them into his pockets. "Look, Radar, you can't know that for sure."

"I can't?" Radar challenged. 

Point. "I don't know. What happens to us if you don't send it? What happens to Jim and Spock and Bones? What about the rest of the world?"

Radar froze, his only movement his hands squeezing the hem of his jacket. "I didn't." He backed up, toward the open tent flap. "I can't." He turned and stalked out of the tent, almost at a run.

Klinger waved Hawkeye out the door. "I'll send it. You round him up and I'll meet you at the jeep." 

He had feared Radar would run off somewhere, but the kid stopped in the middle of the yard to stare out at the hills beyond camp. Hawkeye approached him slowly, fearing he'd spook and run away. For almost a minute, Radar didn't acknowledge him at all, then his shoulders dropped and he turned around. "It's done now," he said.

For a beat, they stared at each other. Then Radar clipped him in the arm with his elbow. "Come on, they'll be here any minute. We gotta get outta here!"

Hawkeye ran after him, hopping into the back next to Margaret. Klinger was already running around to the driver's seat. Radar slid into the seat beside him and Klinger peeled out of camp so fast Frank, who wasn't holding on, would have fallen if Houlihan hadn't held him in place.


	2. In which Margaret gets to go into space but it's not fun at all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Klingons investigate the former site of the 4077th MASH unit and catch up with the last people to leave.

Kraik materialized in the middle of a muddy clearing. A primitive building stood at one end of the place along with the skeletal remains of other structures. Near the center of the clearing stood a drab green tent, the only other structure that stood. "Gosuk, Thal, take three warriors and search the building over there." He gestured to his own people to provide cover and ducked into the tent. A mishmash of wire, metal boxes, gears gears and plugs and bits of glass and rubber sat in the center of the room. The only recognizable part of the thing was the spire of an antenna rising up to merge with the metal pole that held the tent up. 

"Technician Rek!"

"Here," Rek said.

Kraik looked at the tangle of jury-rigged technology over. It remained incomprehensible to him. "Ensure this object is no longer transmitting."

"Yes, sir." Rek paused, clearly deliberating. "Sir!"

"Yes?" Kraik hoped his impatience would be clear to Rek. Scientists were not always the most adept at getting to the point.

"Fresh vehicle tracks outside," Rek reported usefully, for a change.

"Which way did they go?"

Rek answered with a curt gesture.

"Remain here with the device." Kraik strode across the clearing to the other structure. "Thal, report!"

Thal emerged from the building, recording device in hand. "There are no humans here."

Kraik jerked his head in the direction of the road leading away from the camp. "Bring your men. We will capture the cowards as they flee." He flipped open his comlink. "Hakar, transport me and five of my warriors 15 units southwest along the road that passes by this location."

"Yes, Commander." In the space of a few breaths, Kraik and his warriors were caught up in the transporter's beam and whisked to Kraik's chosen point, where they could ambush the enemy and capture the Federation spy.

*

Radar swerved the jeep off the road and into a field, bringing it to a stop beside a small island of trees among the bunched grasses. "Everybody out! Away from the road! Hide!" He ran, slipping on the shallow slope, arms windmilling, Klinger's scrabbling footsteps behind him. He threw out a hand to catch Klinger a moment before he would have stumbled and dragged him behind a thicket of shrubs near the top of a steep incline.

He couldn't get his breathing to slow. Brown crept inward from his peripheral vision like floodwater and his hands, cold and sweating, lost their grip on the grass. Klinger's arm wrapped around him to bear him up, their fear blending together into something sharp and bitter as day old coffee on the back of his tongue. I don't see anything, Klinger didn't say.

 _Stay down_ , Radar thought back, hard, hoping he'd be heard. He kept his head down.

"Geez, Radar you don't have to shout!" Klinger said, too loudly. 

There was a strange ringing noise that Radar could feel in his molars, a shimmer in the air, and six huge aliens in studded leather armor appeared, their hair long and wild, washboard ridges marking their foreheads. "Shhhh," Radar said, pressing a finger to his lips. Something large and clumsy crashed through the brush near the road, catching the attention of the aliens, two of whom strode toward it.

"Come out, cowards!" the alien shouted. The rustling stopped. Radar heard footsteps, but didn't dare raise his head to look. There was shrill whine not unlike the noise laser guns made in the movies, but with a crackling undertone. Frank's terrified shriek followed. The aliens spoke brusquely in the language that he'd become accustomed to hearing over the last few weeks, but still didn't understand. 

"Please don't hurt me," Frank sobbed. "I'll do anything you want!" There was a heavy smack that Radar thought sounded like a punch. Frank's sobs continued.

There had to be a way to get some of them out of this, at least for the moment. Probabilities tangled and broke against each other. He could see the deaths of all of them, still images, dozens of them, varied nightmares of failure that threatened to swallow him whole. Think, he told himself. Stop and think it through. He closed his eyes--he couldn't see anything in front of him but grass anyway. What if he ran? Could he save everyone else?

Be quiet. Breathe. "I'm coming, I'm coming," Houlihan said, her feet shuffling on the road. He couldn't help her now.

There. Klinger, disheveled and bloody, but standing beside a woman wearing a uniform much like the one Jim Kirk had been found wearing. One chance in--Spock could have told him, it was a sliver of probability, but better than nothing--he turned a little toward Klinger. The other man was peering out through a gap between blades of grass, not paying attention to Radar.

He had to be quick. Klinger's toes gripped the side of the hill, precarious on the rain slick grass and steep incline. Radar wrapped a fistful of blades around his hand to anchor himself and shoved Klinger in the shoulder, hard. The only sound his friend made as he fell was a small, surprised gasp. Radar covered the noise of his rolling down the hill by scrambling out from behind it as noisily as he could. "Don't shoot! I'm coming out!" he shouted.

The whistling wheeze of the gun barrels pointed at him was unlike anything he had ever heard. He held his hands high over his head and forced his shaking legs to hold him upright. Behind the three armored figures aiming their guns at him, two others stood over Frank and Houlihan, the latter two sitting on the ground with their hands on their heads. Frank's sleeve was darkened with what might be blood or ash.

One of the aliens stomped forward, his armor rattling, to grab Radar by the upper arm, exposing him to a dizzying, dissonant wash of hard to identify emotions. He stumbled forward, his head brushing an armor clad breast. He swallowed and looked up at a woman almost as terrifying as Houlihan before coffee. "Sorry," he squeaked.

She snarled at him and shoved him to the ground next to Houlihan and Frank. They hadn't yet found Hawkeye or Klinger. He prayed that they wouldn't. With three of them looking, it was likely only a matter of time before they found Hawkeye, especially since they were using some sort of device that looked a little like Spock's tricorder to sweep the scrubby vegetation at the side of the road. It took them less than a minute to drag Hawkeye out from his hiding place. There was some more unintelligible conversation, some pointing from the jeep to Radar and the other prisoners while others continued to wave their devices and sweep the tall grass with the barrels of their guns. He held his breath and looked at the ground, trying to avoid giving Klinger's position away.

When the three who were searching returned, spoke into their devices, and dissolved into gold sparks, Radar didn't let himself sigh in relief. His own body began to tingle and his vision to cloud, then his stomach dropped to his knees and for a moment, everything went white. 

*

It was the five seconds in which she couldn't move that terrified Margaret the most. The numbing lights released her in a red lit room that stank of machine oil and old blood. Her arms were still wrapped tight around Frank to keep him from bolting. She raised her head as much as she dared. Radar sat on the other side of Frank, his knees pulled to his chest, a glazed, half-present look in his eyes. Hawkeye was behind her and from the shaking she could feel against her back, not doing much better. Klinger was nowhere to be seen. She hoped he got away.

"Which of you human worms is in charge?" The alien spoke to the in English.

She stood, keeping one hand firmly on Frank's shoulder. Given his recent demotion, she did outrank him. "I am the ranking officer here," she said curtly. Margaret Houlihan, Major, United States Army." Her serial number was likely meaningless, so she omitted it.

One of the women among their captors moved to within a couple of inches of Margaret, so that Margaret's nose was just level with her armored bosom. "Human women are even softer than their men! Put them all in cell three. Get that one into the mind sifter first while he's still fresh." Two of their captors hauled Frank to his feet, heedless of his burned arm. He howled. Houlihan's instinctive impulse to feel contempt for her former lover evaporated with the desperate pitch of his cries. It was the sound of a man more badly injured than she'd thought at first glance.

"Don't worry, Major, we will take good care of him," the woman sneered. She took Margaret by the upper arm hard enough to bruise and led her, Hawkeye, and Radar off in one direction, Frank in the other.

A short forced march across corrugated metal floors and the three of them were dumped into a cell. The door slid shut behind them, leaving no view of the corridor down which they'd come. Hawkeye collapsed onto the metal bench that lined one wall and scrubbed his hands through his hair. "Don't you dare fall apart on me, Pierce," she snapped. An animal whine came from near her feet. Radar lay curled in a ball on the floor, his hands clutching his beanie and pulling it down so it covered his face. "Radar, get up." He didn't respond. "Corporal O'Reilly, that's an order!"

Radar's feet scuffed the floor, but he didn't sit up. Pierce looked up at Margaret, the look of crushed desolation on his face smoothing over into the mask he wore in Post Op. "Give the kid a break, Margaret." He crossed the cell in a couple of loping steps and folded himself up on the floor next to Radar. "Hey. Radar. You in there?"

"Everything is on fire," Radar mumbled.

"I know, I know," Hawkeye soothed. "I'm going to sit you up, okay?" He waited a beat and hauled Radar to a sitting position, wrapping an arm tight around him. "It's okay, kid. Whatever you need, it's okay."

Margaret saw a glint of wire on the bench and picked up a pair of broken eyeglasses with one lens missing. She wondered who had occupied this cell before they had. She enclosed the glasses gently in her hand and returned to where the two men huddled on the floor. The floor was covered in a fine layer of greasy dirt. She settled to her knees so only the bottoms of her pants would be soiled. "Hawkeye."

Hawkeye stared at the wall behind her, then after a few moments inhaled sharply, blinked, and said, "I was kind of hoping they'd just get it over with."

"It sounds like we're going to be interrogated. Don't give them anything."

Hawkeye laughed a little manically. "I'm going to sing like a canary, Margaret. No way I can hold out against whatever these guys have planned." He studied the floor. "Frank will have told them everything anyway."

"Hawkeye."

"Margaret, I'm not built for war." He squeezed Radar's shoulder a little tighter for a moment. "Any more than he is. Korea already chewed me up and spit me out. Radar's a little tougher, but this is it for us. We're done. We're good as civilians."

"Not as long as you wear the uniform of the United States Army, you're not."

Hawkeye sniffed. "Major--Margaret, I didn't choose to wear this uniform."

Margaret felt a bubble of rage building under her heart. She opened her mouth to dress both Hawkeye and Radar down for cowardice, but at the last moment she looked into Hawkeye's eyes and saw the desolation there. They were going to die here, no matter what they did or didn't do. If she spent her anger on Hawkeye it would only give their captors satisfation. She licked her lips. "Hawkeye, I'm not going to kid you. We've been dealt a shitty hand. I don't want you to hold out against those monsters for the uniform, or the flag, or President Truman." She stopped to open the hand that held the broken glasses she'd found. No, it couldn't be. A lot of people wore wire rimmed glasses with coke bottle lenses. They looked an awful lot like Radar's own glasses, if it came down to it. "We have to hold out as long as we can because every minute we do gives help another minute to arrive."

Hawkeye looked down at the top of Radar's head and shook his head, his lips pressed together as though he was afraid of the sounds that might come out of them. "I know. I just don't know if I can. I don't even know what we're up against."

She shifted position to try to see Radar's face. "How about you, Radar?"

"I'm not sure he can hear you," Hawkeye said. She reached to take a pulse, but Hawkeye stopped her. "Not now."

"What's wrong with him now?" She winced at the impatience in her own voice. Radar hadn't been the same since Henry had gone down in the South China Sea, but whatever had happened to him when the world had been dragged forward in time made her wonder if he'd ever be right again. Probably not, she thought bitterly, given that their remaining lifetimes were probably measured in hours.

Radar shifted his weight slightly and grunted, "Hurts."

"What hurts, Radar?"

"The fire. I'm on fire." He forced out the words. 

So the kid had finally cracked under the strain. At least looking after him might give Hawkeye something to occupy himself. The heavy metal door slid open slowly with a screeching protest. Frank tumbled in, coming to rest in a fetal position on the floor. His left sleeve was soaked with blood along with the left side of his face and head. Margaret left Hawkeye and Radar to tend to him, but as soon as she stood she was caught up on either side by a pair of brutes who began dragging her out the door.

She went quietly, not out of a desire to protect herself, but because she hoped to be returned to their cell in good enough shape to help Hawkeye with Radar and Frank. It was a long, clanging walk. They held her unnecessarily tightly, their hands gripping her arms with bruising force. After one hundred fifteen steps, two right turns and a left, they shoved her through another door to stand before a lounging, heavily decorated man with an unkempt head of dark hair and a beard worthy of a mountain hermit. 

"This is what passes for a ranking officer in the army of a human superpower?" the man, and she used the term loosely, sneered. "They look like infants, don't they?"

Behind her, her guards laughed, artificially loudly, as though they were competing to see who could roar the loudest. Margaret clasped her hands behind her back and stood at ease, chin held high.

"So, you are Major Margaret Houlihan. Such extravagantly long names humans have. My tongue tires speaking it. I believe I will call you Marg. To rhyme with Targ. If you survive the mind sifter I believe I will keep you as a pet."

Margaret concentrated on maintaining her posture, on the feel of metal flooring under her boots and her hands, clasped one inside the other. Her guards, at a vague hand gesture from their superior, hauled her toward a reclining chair not unlike a dentist's chair. There was a screen affixed to the wall behind the chair, and a pair of metal panels the size of a pack of cards arranged so that her head would lie between them once she was in the chair. They wrestled her into it and bound her hands, ankles, and forehead. She turned her head from side to side, hoping to dislodge the strap, but succeeded only in abrading her forehead. 

The device was flipped on. She was surprised to find she felt no pain, only an odd tingling at the roots of her hair and the sudden, strange conviction that someone was standing just beyond her field of view. She could hear her interrogator rise from his chair and plod toward her, stopping to stand in the precise location in which the ghostly presence had seemed to be. In her imagination he grew larger, more compelling. "Where are Captain Kirk, Commander Spock, and Dr. McCoy?" he asked in a firm, commanding voice that felt so much like an order she began to respond.

"They left--" she caught herself, forced herself to think. "They left. I don't know where they went." A part of her was glad they'd lost contact with the rest of the camp, making her statement literally true.

"Who built the subspace transmitter?"

"Spock." Again, literally true if incomplete. The Klingon could easily have guessed as much as she told him.

"Who else?"

Frank had blown it. He'd given up Radar and possibly Klinger too. "No one," she said, the lie twisting inside her as though it was her father she was misleading. Faint colored light dappled her arms, reflected from behind her. The screen that she'd seen when they put her in the chair? "The mind sifter sees your thoughts. It puts them up on the screen. I can see the other person. Frank gave his name already, so you might as well save yourself trouble."

"I'd rather not," she snapped, holding on to her anger as a lifeline.

"Esska, turn it up."


	3. In which Margaret says goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klinger walks back to the 4077th and meets otherworldly visitors. Margaret, Hawkeye, Radar and Frank endure Klingon captivity

It had been two hours since their alien captors dragged Margaret away. Frank lay on the bench with Hawkeye's jacket cushioning his head and Radar's covering him to keep him a little warmer. The flash burns on his face and left arm hadn't looked serious at first, but the tissue was disintegrating under the skin, growing spongy and grossly swollen. His temperature had been rising steadily since he'd returned from interrogation. "Can't I have some water?" he mumbled, licking his lips. 

"If I had it I'd give it to you," Hawkeye said wearily from his spot on the floor.

Radar, at least, had graduated from catatonia to nervous pacing. Hawkeye would have liked to tell him to stop, but he wasn't a cruel man. The kid stopped, rocking from heel to toe in place. "Cap'n Hawkeye?" he said, beckoning him away from Frank.

Hawkeye struggled to his feet to cross to where Radar stood. "What is it?"

"How much longer?" His voice was so soft he was almost mouthing the words. His knuckles wore telltale semicircular bruises.

"I don't know, Radar." He didn't know for sure what Radar was asking until he saw the kid's eyes flit nervously toward Frank and away.

"What's wrong with him?"

Hawkeye shook his head. "I don't really know. Whatever hit him--it's like it ruptured all the cells under the skin. He's bleeding internally and I don't have anything here to stop it." If it even could be stopped.

Radar stuffed his hands into his pockets. "I can't help either."

"I wouldn't ask you to, kid."

Radar looked away. Hawkeye shouldn't have called him a kid. He paced the floor for a few more minutes, while Frank mumbled less and less coherently beside him. 

Radar startled and took a couple of steps toward the back wall. "They're coming for me now."

Hawkeye stood between Radar and the door. The door to their cell opened again and Margaret was shoved through, on her feet Hawkeye noticed gratefully.

The Klingons moved toward Radar. Hawkeye planted a hand in the middle of the taller one's chest. It trembled slightly. "Take me instead. Radar's just a kid. He doesn't know anything."

"That's not what that one said," the Klingon scoffed, chucking his chin at Frank.

Hawkeye stared up into the Klingon's deep set eyes and forced himself to keep his gaze firm and steady. "That one needs medical treatment or he'll die."

"He's dead already. Just doesn't know it yet."

He dropped his head, the Klingon merely confirming what Hawkeye already knew. "Something for the pain, then."

The Klingon snorted. "Humans." He turned to Radar. "Walk ahead of me. If you attempt to escape I will shoot you."

Radar swallowed and ducked his head. "I don't want any trouble."

They disappeared out the door. He ought to see to Margaret. Who knew what they'd done to her? She was kneeling in front of Frank, clasping his right hand in hers and looking into his eyes.

"Hawkeye allowed himself one last glance at the closing door before settling down beside Margaret. "Are you all right?" It was a stupid question.

She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Do I look all right?"

"The interrogation, Margaret. Did they hurt you?"

She dismissed his question with a wave, her attention still focused on Frank. "Gave me a headache I didn't need, that's all. Radar's right. It's not the sort of interrogation you can resist. They've got some sort of machine. It reads your thoughts and puts them up on a screen."

Hawkeye shuddered at the thought. "What do they know?"

"They know about Radar's whatever it is. They must have gotten it out of Frank, because they asked me about him right away." Hawkeye nodded. "And they know about Kirk, Spock, and Bones. Just when they left and what direction they went. I've never been so happy to not know what happened to somebody."

"Radar may know."

"That's what I'm afraid of." She stroked Frank's good cheek, then leaned in to kiss his forehead.

"You love me," Frank whispered, his voice slurring through swollen lips.

"Always. Try to get some rest." It didn't even sound like a lie.

"Knew you'd come back to me," he said. 

*

Klinger lay at the bottom of the hill, invisible from the road and half buried in tall grass. Biting flies buzzed around the scrapes on his bare arms and legs. His head spun and throbbed. He couldn't have moved if he wanted to, so he lay still, face turned to the late afternoon sky. When the ground steadied beneath him, he rolled on his side, head pillowed on his elbow while he waited for a fresh wave of nausea to pass. He worked himself up to a sitting position by inches, rising almost as slowly as the sun was dropping in the sky. His head ached.

He picked up his crushed hat, regretting the ten dollars it cost him, then inventoried his body. He pressed gingerly at his skull, feeling nothing seriously amiss, though his fingers came away tacky when he touched the back of his head. His arms were scraped and bloodied but not broken. He opened and closed his fists just to be sure. His left knee and hip complained vigorously when he tried to stand. He pulled his knees to his chest, wincing, stretched his legs back out and turned them out and in, then tried again. He could bear weight on the injured leg, but he wasn't going to enjoy climbing back up to the road. 

Until he could see whether the aliens were really gone, he couldn't risk shouting, so he made his way slowly and quietly up the hill, coming out into a copse of trees a little up the road from where he'd fallen. Been pushed. There was no sign of the aliens, or anyone else, on the road. He waited on the road for several minutes, hoping any of the rest of them would emerge from the brush, while two small groups of refugees passed by him on the way to Seoul. The sun, invisible behind the trees, must have begun to dip below the horizon, judging from the fading light. He ought to follow the refugees to Seoul, try to catch up with Potter and the trucks. Let them know what happened to Hawkeye, Radar, and Margaret. And Frank. He took a few dozen steps in that direction. It was at least ten miles to Seoul, and a little over a mile back to camp. His hip ached with every step and he couldn't keep from limping.

He stopped, turned around, and hobbled back in the direction of camp. There wasn't much for him there, but the radio ought to be working and there might be something to eat or some liquor left at Rosie's. He stopped every ten or fifteen yards to sit and fan himself with the remains of his hat, then got up again when the flies figured out where he was. There had better at least be water, he thought. The light faded and the stars came out. He didn't want to look at them tonight.

The smoke rising from the camp came in sight long before the camp itself. He was almost too hot, tired, and thirsty to care if whoever lit it was still around, waiting to capture him or worse. He eased his way to the side of the road and took his last sit-down break behind a patch of shrubs just out of the camp's sightline. He couldn't stay. He needed water and bandages, food if there was any left behind, and a way to get in touch with Sparky or he was just as dead as if he had been captured. That was no way to repay Radar for saving his life at the cost of his own. He shifted his weight and his hip and knee sang out twin complaints. Pop in the nose might repay him for shoving Klinger down the hill like that. He hauled himself to his feet and into sight of the camp. The tent with the transmitter and the radio in it was a smoldering wreck. So, no calling out for rescue. He was on his own.

He stumbled the last few steps before sagging onto an upturned crate near the footprint of his old tent and buried his face in his hands. He'd known the day was going to be awful, but now that Hawkeye and Margaret and God, Radar were probably dead and the rest of the 4077th was missing in action he just wanted it all to be over and done with. He sobbed loudly and shamelessly, mopping at his eyes with his apron. There was no one to see anyway.

No one but the owner of the approaching footsteps.

He didn't even bother to look up. There was no reason to, there was no way he could run fast enough to get away from whoever it was, North Korean or Klingon or whatever. If he was lucky they'd just shoot him. Whoever it was dropped to one knee beside him. He smelled floral shampoo and looked up, surprised. An astonishingly lovely black woman in a bright red minidress smiled warmly at him. "Need some help?"

The front of her dress was emblazoned with the same gold chevron that he'd meticulously sewn to Kirk, Spock, and Bones' shirts only a couple of days ago. He stared for a minute, his mouth unable to remember how to form words. "They're gone," he said finally, voice cracking with emotion and thirst.

"Who?"

"Your people. The Captain. Bones. Spock. They left early this morning for Seoul. We lost contact with them around noon." 

Two more of them approached, a short, dark haired young man in blue and a woman in a gold shirt and black pants. The woman beside him looked up. "The Captain, Spock, and Dr. McCoy left for Seoul this morning."

"What about everyone else?" The woman in gold said.

Klinger struggled to his feet. "Bugged out in the morning, all but four--five of us. We left at," he stopped to think, "Sixteen-forty. Those Klingon whatevers caught up to us on the road. I didn't see any bodies, so they must have taken the others away."

"Who sent the message?"

"I did." He ignored her look of surprise. "My friends have been captured. I don't know if they're dead or alive, but we need to get them back. Please." 

The woman considered for a moment longer. "What's your name?"

She hadn't made any remarks about his clothing yet, oddly enough. Maybe men in her time wore dresses as well as makeup. "Corporal Max Klinger, Ma'am."

"I'm Captain Una, and these are Lieutenants Chekov and Uhura. I'd like to take you back up to the ship. The trail is pretty cold down here if they've been gone since morning."

"We'll have to wait for the Enterprise to make its next approach," the one she'd called Uhura said.

"Of course."

Klinger's brain caught up with Una's words. "Take me to your--ship?"

"It's Kirk's ship, I'm just keeping it warm for him." Her face swirled in his vision and he had to sit down right then and there, mud or no mud. She reached out and caught him before he hit the ground. Other arms wrapped around behind him and lowered him down. "Uhura, how soon until Enterprise can collect us? This man needs medical attention."

"I'm fine," Klinger lied transparently and tried to stand up. Uhura planted a hand on his chest. "Just thirsty."

"Right. Is there a water source?"

"Main hospital building." He coughed.

"Mr. Chekov, bring Corporal Klinger some water." She crossed her legs and sat down, right on the still-tacky ground, beside him. Uhura sat on the other side and he was at once flanked by two exceptionally beautiful women . "I think I died and went to heaven," he said, grinning. 

Uhura ignored his remark and regarded the smoldering remains of the transmitter. "Corporal, I am curious. How did you manage to construct a subspace receiver using only materials available in this time period? Did the computing power come from vacuum tubes or transistors?"

"I don't know. You'd have to ask Spock or--or Radar. If either one of them is still alive."

Una rested a hand on his arm. "Commander Spock and I go way back. If they're alive, we'll find them."

*

Radar was alive, much to his surprise. He'd tried to shield against the mind sifter, but it was a slippery, soulless thing made of needles of static and he didn't know how to push it away. He tried to focus on just his breath and not on the questions they were asking him. They just turned the gain up on the thing and he stopped wanting to keep anything from them. He'd gone into a sort of fugue, memories past and future tangling together into a nearly meaningless collage of faces and places. They'd recorded the pictures in his head, then turned him around and played them back for him, wanting him to tease meaning out of the chaos his brain had supplied. 

He lied, stalled, and pretended delirium until they dragged him out of the chair and force marched him back to his cell. By the time they shoved him through the door he really was delirious. He fell to the floor and wrapped his arms around his stomach, queasy and starving at once. Everything moved around him in spinning, swooping circles so he felt like he might fall off the floor. He hadn't felt like this since the night they'd said goodbye to Henry and he'd gotten so drunk he'd had a hard time knowing for sure which of them he was.

Hawkeye sat on the floor beside him, a breath of space between. Heedless, Radar crawled into his lap like he had his Uncle Ed's when he was small. The song Hawkeye hummed was unfamiliar and sad, but it wrapped around him like a warm quilt. He let out the breath he was holding and allowed himself to cry like he was a little kid again. 

"Hawkeye." Houlihan's voice, soft but urgent, broke the moment into a thousand pieces. Hawkeye untangled himself and left Radar curled up against the wall, alone. He made himself look up. Tear smears had dried on his lenses. He cleaned them with his least dirty bit of shirt. Hawkeye and Houlihan knelt beside the bench where Frank lay. They were in space, above the green earth and the blue sky and Frank was dying, right this minute and Radar felt hollow. He wanted to curl up inside himself and escape the empty feeling pulling at his insides, reminding him of the hole where Henry used to be. It was strange. He hated Frank, truly hated him like he'd hated no one else in his life before, but he still didn't want him dead. 

The world didn't care what he wanted. There was a little sniffle across the room, a sharp jab like an ice cream headache and Frank was where ever people go. After. Ma said Heaven. Or Hell. Or maybe, like Commander Spock thought, they just faded away like old photographs. He listened to Major Houlihan sobbing, Hawkeye murmuring unimportant words and he didn't want to have to break again and again as all the threads that bound him snapped, one at a time. Ma and Uncle Ed, Colonel Potter and Father Mulcahy and Klinger. There was a sort of catch, a break in the muddy, fire-shot smoke in his mind's eye. He thought he saw light. 

What would Spock think if he sat here feeling sorry for himself and missed a chance to make things better? What would Ma think? He shifted position against the wall so he was sitting cross-legged and closed his eyes again, ignoring the tears dripping off his chin. Here and now was so awful it was easier to let go and look to then and there, let his mind pull him along where it wanted to go. The bombs that had already fallen were raw wounds in the world, and there would be more to come--too many more. Spock was alive, that much he could tell--and not in a right now kind of danger. The Colonel and Kellye were alive and as safe as anyone could be and Klinger--that thread of possibility dragged him along like a current, though it wouldn't hold still so he could see what to do.

There was a way out. He didn't know where it was yet, he only knew that it was--and that everything and everyone he cared about depended on them finding it. 


	4. In which Hawkeye, Houlihan, and Radar play "Get Help"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Una tries to make sense of Klinger on the Enterprise while Hawkeye, Margaret, and Radar try to get a message out in hopes of attracting rescue.

Margaret raised Radar's jacket up to cover Frank's face. Hawkeye had retreated to the opposite corner of the room to pace and flick his fingers while mouthing a monologue meant for his ears alone. Radar was quieter, neatly cross legged with his hands steepled in front of him in a way that on a round faced Iowa farm boy looked somehow even more alien than it did on the actual alien who had taught it to him. The slightly pushed out lower lip and brow wrinkles signaled he was anything but relaxed.

She knew better than to disturb the kid, but her own limbs and mind were growing restless. She rubbed the tackiness on her hands onto her pants. The dim, reddish light in their cell at least obscured the color, but what she wouldn't give for water to wash in. She rose in a smooth movement. In a way that wasn't true of Radar, certainly wasn't true of Hawkeye, she belonged here. She had worn the uniform for nearly two decades, committed herself to what it meant to place herself in harm's way. She didn't blame herself for being glad these Klingons apparently found her as unattractive as she found them--or perhaps, cruel and vulgar as they seemed, rape wasn't part of their martial repertoire. Small favors.

A captive had three duties. Escape if at all possible, failing that, sabotage, and failing that, survival. Given that they were in a metal box surrounded by airless void who knew how many miles above the Earth, escape seemed vanishingly unlikely. If they were to spend their lives in an effort to sabotage their captors, she wanted to make it count. She placed herself in Hawkeye's way so he'd have to either acknowledge her or run straight into her. He stopped short, flashed her a grin, and ducked his head to scrub his already messy hair into further disarray. "Never was good at waiting," he said by way of apology.

She put on her best superior officer frown. "Captain Pierce. Get it together, we have work to do."

Pierce flung an arm out to indicate their cell. "What work to do? I don't see anything."

She chucked her chin at a couple of small access panels high on the wall. "I wonder if we can get those open."

He followed her gaze to regard the panels for a minute, then barked a derisive laugh. "What's the point?" He turned away from her to resume his pacing.

Footsteps tapped behind her. She turned her head to see Radar rocking on his feet and following Hawkeye's movements with his eyes. "We gotta get out of here, Cap'n Hawkeye," he said.

"And how are we going to--" Hawkeye started at volume, but stopped himself when Radar took a step backward. "Sorry Radar. What's up?"

Radar glanced at each of them and then at the floor. He took a rough breath, then set his feet to shoulder width, squared his shoulders, and locked his hands behind him. "Major Houlihan, I wanna make a report."

Good. The military discipline would give him something to hang on to. Hawkeye had never seemed to realize why it irked her so much when he made a joke of it--he never understood the comfort and stability it gave in the face of danger. "Report, then, Corporal."

"The--the Klingons are blowing up whole cities down there. We gotta escape, get to the Enterprise." He stopped again to collect himself. "If we get there, we might be able to save the world." He paused to duck his head for a moment before adding, "Most of it."

"There's no way out of here, Radar," Hawkeye said wearily.

"Shut. Up." Margaret told him with an elbow to the ribs for emphasis.

Radar smiled at her for a fraction of a second by way of thanks. "We just have to get out of here long enough to get a message to Enterprise."

"Just that," Hawkeye repeated. "Might as well try to walk right through the walls like ghosts. Besides, none of us knows how to use their equipment."

"Don't have to. Just have to break it right."

Hawkeye loped over to the bench to settle beside Frank's feet. "I don't know Radar. I'm tired."

Margaret had had about enough of his defeatist attitude. It didn't matter that he was probably right, they were most likely going to die here, without anyone ever knowing what happened to them while the world burned below them. What mattered was that they did their duty up until the bitter end. She stood over him, hands on her hips. "Captain Pierce! You may not give a damn about your country, but your planet needs you."

"Shoulda picked somebody else. I'm done."

"Hawkeye, your dad needs you."

Pierce sighed, defeated. He rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. "Radar, you think you got a prank in you?"

"You bet I do, Captain Hawkeye." He chewed his lip and looked up at the ceiling, already scheming.

"All right, we're getting somewhere." Margaret doubted that anything would come of this, but if it kept them all busy, so much the better. "Those Klingons are so sure of their superiority they didn't even search us before they threw us in here. Check your pockets. Let's see what we have to work with."

*

Una stepped off the transporter pad, gesturing for Corporal Klinger to follow. The disheveled man stumbled on the step, Uhura catching him easily. He patted her hand. "You're just lovely, Ma'am. Are you a nurse?"

Uhura laughed. "Hardly. Communications officer."

"Get him to Sickbay, Lieutenant. I'll follow shortly. Mr. Scott, have we had any luck locating our people?"

"Still nothing." He watched Uhura leave with Klinger. "That's an odd getup for a fella from the mid-twentieth century."

Una considered. She'd done a little research on mid-twentieth century Earth history on their way here and recognized the man's clothes as being a style worn by American and European women of the time, but it was possible men wore dresses of that type too. So many records had been lost during the wars of the 21st century. "Maybe a local fashion?"

Scott gave her a side-eye. "Maybe." 

She drummed her fingers on the transporter console. "Can we zero in on Vulcan life signs?"

"Not without a general idea of where on the planet he might be. Say, a five kilometer radius," Chekov said. 

She popped the console lightly with a fist for emphasis. "Do what you can, both of you."

"Aye, I'm doing my best, Captain."

"Keep me posted. I'm going to have a talk with Corporal Klinger." She made her way to Sickbay by way of the bridge, wanting to check in with her first officer. 

She found Sulu standing behind his captain's chair, one hand resting on the back, staring down the Klingon vessels on the viewscreen. "Captain on the bridge," Riley announced.

She acknowledged his announcement with a nod. "Mr. Sulu, anything new to report?"

Sulu shook his head. "The Klingons buzz us every few minutes, but Riley can handle them. Any news on our captain?"

She let herself smile. "We have a lead. I'm going to Sickbay to question an Army corporal who claims he knows them." 

"That's better news than I'd hoped. I'd like to come with you to Sickbay, ask a few questions myself."

"You'll have your chance later. I need you on the bridge."

He nodded agreement, though his face showed his disappointment. She made her way to Sickbay, hoping the detour had given M'Benga and Chapel a chance to check Corporal Klinger over.

The man sat on a biobed in a patient smock, clearly fresh from a sonic shower. a tray of replicated waffles in front of him. He set his fork down when she approached. "Captain--Una, was it?"

"Corporal Klinger. I'd like to debrief you more thoroughly later, but for now, I need you to go over what happened to our people."

"I wish I knew. They were headed to Seoul with the main convoy. Colonel Potter was checking in with us every hour until he missed the noon call. Radar tried to raise them all afternoon, no dice."

"What do you suppose could have happened?"

"Could have had an accident on the road. Could have gotten captured by the North Koreans. If they were captured, they'd have been taken to one of the camps out in the forest near Seoul." He winced. "They often shoot injured prisoners, though. Or leave them to die."

That was grim news. "How bad off were the two of them, really?"

"Spock was healthy as a horse and faster on crutches than some guys on two legs. Kirk was up and around, but he really shouldn't be walking any distance. "Is it possible they had technical problems with the radio and are continuing to their intended destination?"

"I don't think so. Ra--Corporal O'Reilly was beside himself."

The next question had to be phrased carefully. "Our men. Have they been treated well? Do you believe they are in any danger from your own government?"

"Now you look here." He raised a finger as though he was going to poke it into her chest, but thought better of it and merely raised it high. "The 4077th provides the best of care to all of our patients, whether they're allies, North Korean, South Korean, or aliens from the future!" 

"I don't doubt that, Corporal."

"See that you don't." He took a bite of waffle and chewed thoughtfully. "If they made it to Seoul, for all I know they could be dining with the President by tomorrow. Or stuck in an interrogation room. Hard to tell with government people, you know."

Una nodded in sympathy, thinking of all her run ins with admirals and bureaucrats who liked to throw their weight around. "We've been trying to find them by listening in on communications. Are there any code names that might help us find them?"

Klinger leaned forward, wiry, hairy arms braced on his knees. "You find them, you just gonna book it out of here and leave the rest of us in the lurch?" Una had to pause. That would be the safest course of action from a Prime Directive standpoint. Collect Starfleet's people, withdraw, and wait for the Federation to authorize further intervention--which they were unlikely to do. Klinger shook his head. "I can't help you unless you help me. My friends have been captured, my home is in peril--I'm not giving anything away for free."

Una could feel a headache coming on. "Your friends. You saw them captured by Klingons. How many of them?"

"Three Klingons."

"How many of your people?"

"Four. Our head nurse, Major Houlihan. Captain Pierce, Major Burns, and Corporal O'Reilly. O'Reilly's just nineteen. Commander Spock took quite a shine to him. If something happens to the kid it'll break his heart." He accompanied his plea with grand gestures that nearly knocked the tray off his lap, spreading his arms wide and then placing them over his heart. After a moment, he did a grandiose double take and moved his hands down to cover his side near the bottom of his rib cage. "Pierce saved Spock's life. O'Reilly helped build the transmitter that brought you here. You owe them."

"We'll do what we can," she said. In all likelihood, they were dead already.

He hopped off the biobed to grab her by the arm. "Oh, hey, if anyone would know where your people were supposed to be going, it would be O'Reilly. He's our logistics guy." His smile grew wide, entreating.

Una tugged her arm free. "Why do I feel like I'm being conned?"

"I can't imagine. I'm the most honest guy you'll ever meet."

"I doubt that. I've met Spock."

He tipped an imaginary cap to her. "Touche, my Captain."

I'll see if we can calibrate our sensors to pick up human life signs through the Klingon vessels' shields. With any luck, we can figure out where your friends are."

The smile vanished. "I hope so."

*

"I don't like this plan at all, Hawkeye." Major Houlihan, Hawkeye, and Radar sat in a tight circle on the floor of their cell, heads nearly touching, in hopes that they might speak quietly enough to confound any listening devices. Radar might have been able to arrange it so they didn't have to talk at all, but he wasn't sure enough of himself to try, and it was hard enough keeping from shattering entirely without piling anyone else's worries on top. His part in the plan was simple, at least at first. He just had to pretend to be sick. It wasn't going to be pretending, but they didn't need to know that. The Major didn't put up with complaining and Hawkeye didn't need any more to worry about.

Hawkeye nudged Major Houlihan's shoulder. "Aw come on, Hot Lips, it's for a good cause."

Major Houlihan scowled. "Don't call me that!" She turned to Radar. "Corporal, you ready?"

"Ready, Major." The two of them stood on either side of Radar, near the door. Radar let himself sag into their arms, allowing himself to feel the extent of his exhaustion.

"Help!" Hawkeye shouted. "Radar's having a seizure or something! I think it's that machine you put us in. Help!"

There was no response. Radar let his head droop onto Houlihan's chest. If he was going to die anyway, he might as well get a tiny bit of joy out of it. Houlihan rolled his head back toward Pierce with a disgusted huff that hid a spark of amused fondness and shouted, "You better get in here if you want him alive!"

For another couple of minutes, they alternated shouting and waiting. finally, the door clanged open and two Klingons stomped in. "I am the medic for this vessel. What are the prisoner's symptoms?"

Radar braced himself. "Come over here and take him, we can't hold him up much longer," Hawkeye said, adjusting his grip on Radar's arm just as Major Houlihan did the same on Radar's opposite side. With his head down, he couldn't see either Klingon, but between the sound of their armor shifting on their bodies and the puckers their presence made in his personal space, he could tell where they were. Hawkeye was focused intently at his side, waiting, waiting--Radar shot forward, propelled by Hawkeye and Major Houlihan. He landed on his behind, just on the outside of the door. The corridor was otherwise empty. He caught a glimpse of Hawkeye and Major Houlihan each wrapped around a Klingon. Both aliens had been startled to stillness for a moment, expecting to be fought, not suddenly and passionately kissed. He did not envy Hawkeye or the Major one bit. The door lock was a simple lighted panel. He pounded it with a fist and it slid closed, leaving him in the corridor, alone.

He slid back into a recess in the wall, acutely aware of how little time he had to act. One breath, in and out. He couldn't think his way out of this one. He had to feel his way, as though navigating a blackout. He let his feet carry him in the right direction, relying less on Spock's instruction in logical analysis now than on the memory of his grandmother dowsing the well that still served the family farm. She'd explained how she followed the flowing lines, the pull of the water to him, even let him hold the forked sticks in his chubby six-year-old hands and walk beside her back and forth across the meadow behind the house.

Possible actions and consequences flowed past him like water underground, not quite seen but sensible all the same. Someone was coming. He stopped and tried a door. It was unlocked. The room contained a row of pits covered with wide grates in the floor and bars at various heights. It might be a strange sort of gymnasium, or perhaps, given the faint but unmistakable odor, a bathroom? A pair of booted feet passed him in the corridor beyond the closed door. On impulse, he stood over one of the grates and relieved himself into it, unsure whether he did so out of nerves or a perverse desire to, if he survived, have a good story to tell Klinger.

The way was clear now. He slipped back into the corridor and around a corner, dowsing his way toward his goal, focused on a way he could get a message out. An access panel had been left open near the floor. There were glowing tubes and wires inside. He had no idea what he was doing, but he thought it was possible that if he were to break a connection in a pattern, that might get the attention of the Federation ship his interrogators had let slip was orbiting nearby. He pulled a thick bundle of wires loose, touched it back to the panel. Repeated the action. Quickly, he tapped out a message in Morse code. He managed to repeat it a few times before running footsteps echoed behind him and he dropped the bundle of wires, reached into the panel with both arms, and yanked out everything he could reach.

Something sparked, his arms spasmed and went numb, and the world went dark.


	5. In which Hawkeye and Margaret get in a fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawkeye, Margaret, and Radar suffer the consequences of their escape attempt.

The Acting Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise had a demeanor that reminded Max Klinger of Colonel Potter. "You're dehydrated, you have a concussion, a head wound, and torn ligaments in your leg that you walked on for over a mile. You're not going anywhere today."

"C'mon, Dr. M'Benga, I need to get to work! My friends are on one of those ships with who knows what happening to them!"

"Lieutenant Uhura is a brilliant--"

"Gorgeous--" Klinger interrupted.

M'Benga dismissed him with a gesture. "That goes without saying. But she'd rather be complimented on her ability to pick apart a noisy data signal than on her legs." His voice carried a note of warning.

"Cool your jets, I'm a married man!" Klinger thumped back down onto the patient bed, wishing he had a skirt to flounce. It was going to be a long wait.

*

"I've found one of the Enterprise command crew codes on the backside of a military carrier channel," Uhura said, sitting up straight in her chair for the first time in nearly an hour and stretching left and right to pop her spine back into place.

"Put it on so we can hear it, Lieutenant."

"It's not voice." Una gave her a pointed look. "I'll read it to you," she conceded. "Message begins. Captain Kirk, Commander Spock, Dr. McCoy safe and secure under temporary command of US Army General Ridgway, consulting with local authorities on Klingon invasion. Currently in transit, will update location on arrival."

The tone was reassuring even if the amount of information was limited. Una considered. "Any way we can get a return message to them?"

"Possibly."

"Work on it. I'll be in my ready room drafting a response." She turned on her heel.

Riley caught her attention just before she reached the exit. "Captain Una, I'm reading fluctuations in the Klingons' shields."

"Mr. Chekov, can you take advantage, get a scan?"

"Possibly, Captain."

"Get on it. Riley, give me details."

"The fluctuations are in a pattern. Beats, like music or--"

"Let me hear them, Ensign."

The young man tapped a few buttons on his console. A sound, just at the lowest edge of hearing filled the bridge, a syncopated beat, sound and silence in 1:3:1 ratios. Una recognized the cadences of Morse Code immediately. "That's an SOS."

Uhura silenced them with an upraised hand, then began to speak letters aloud. "POW, space, the number three, MAJMJH, space, CPTBFH, space, CPLWEO. Message repeats."

"Prisoners of war, three of them, and some kind of identifying codes?"

"The first three letters of each code correspond to old United States Army ranks. Major, Captain, and Corporal. They could be our captured locals."

Una took only a second to prioritize her tasks. "Right. Chekov, get Scott at the transporter and find a way to punch through those shields. Scan for human life signs and get whoever it is out of there. I'm heading back to Sickbay to see if Corporal Klinger recognizes those symbols. Mr. Sulu, put together a message for your captain and have Uhura patch it through. Send me a copy."

*

Large, rough hands planted themselves on Margaret's chest and shoved her back hard enough that she stumbled and fell onto Frank's stiffening body. Hawkeye landed beside her. The Klingons turned away from them as though they were beneath notice, saw the door locked behind them, and roared.

Margaret wiped blood from her mouth. "Those teeth are sharp," she muttered.

Their Klingon captors had moved from howling to unmistakable laughter. The door slid open, but the two of them had been delayed just long enough that he could hope Radar managed to find a place to hide. One jabbed the other hard in the ribs and received a thump on the back in return. The door slid shut. "I don't know whether to feel relieved or offended. I kind of expected more of a response." He smacked his lips, bemused. "He tasted like summer sausage."

"Hawkeye, you're disgusting."

He smirked at her. "Why thank you, Major."

They sat, a hand span apart, knees to their chests. Watching the door. "How long do you suppose it will be until they come back?" Houlihan said, a quaver just detectable in her voice. She swallowed it down.

"Who knows?" Hawkeye said. He tipped his head back to regard the ceiling, his voice going hollow. "Maybe they'll just leave us here."

"You're terrible company, Hawkeye."

"I try. How do you think Radar's doing?"

"I try not to."

The lights went out. Margaret threw her arms around Hawkeye, digging her nails into his arm and burying her face in the hollow of his chest. Her ears popped, and she realized that a low hum and a vibration that she hadn't noticed before was gone. Tin can in a vacuum, she thought and shuddered.

"This is his doing. I guarantee it," Hawkeye said. She turned her clutching into a hug, pretending to herself that's what it had been all along.

He nodded and hugged her back, but she couldn't push down the horrible realization that they had probably just seen the moment of Radar's death. And even though she'd known it was inevitable from the moment they'd been captured, even though she knew that she and Hawkeye would probably follow him soon, the knowledge squeezed her chest until she couldn't breathe. Beside her, Hawkeye whimpered.

"Don't you dare cry, Hawkeye. I can't keep it together if you cry." He turned his head away from her. There was a low _whump_ and the humming of what must be a ventilation system returned. The lights flickered back on but remained dim and unsteady.

They didn't have to wait long. Booted feet clanged up the corridor outside, the door banged open, and two Klingons dragged Radar into their cell and dumped him on the floor, where he didn't move. Margaret darted forward, half expecting to be shot for her trouble, but they left her be. "You fight with little honor, humans, but at least you fight," the taller one said. He looked down at Radar. "Pity."

"Nineteen. He's nineteen," Hawkeye muttered. He pressed fingers to Radar's throat, nodded at Margaret. They stared at his chest, saw it rise and fall with a breath. It was better than nothing.

Hawkeye tapped her arm. "Margaret, get his jacket off--off Burns. He's shocky."

She pulled off the jacket. It was mottled and tacky. She knelt beside Hawkeye. "I can't put this on him. It's too badly soiled."

"We can roll it up and put it under his feet." She rolled the jacket tight, and lifted Radar's feet onto it, then caught at his wrist herself. The clerk's pulse was fast and thready with shock. A sound in his throat was all the warning Margaret needed to shout, "Turn him!"

The two of them rolled him onto his side in time for him to vomit onto the floor rather than aspirating. She hoped for a moment that Radar might awaken, but there was no sign of awareness in the limp body. Margaret reached to clear his mouth with a finger and tried not to think about brain damage. "Check him for injuries," he told her. He palpated the kid's skull, feeling for the telltale stickiness of blood, the faint scraping creak of a skull fracture, or the sponginess of contusion. 

She checked over the rest of his body as well as she could. His hands were puffy and red with burns. She couldn't see well in the dim and uncertain light, but they looked mostly second degree, with a pale patch of third along the inside of the right thumb. "His hands. Electrical burns, it looks like."

"We should look for an exit wound."

"Rather not undress him. Nothing we can do about it here anyway," Houlihan argued matter of factly. By mutual agreement they both stripped off everything but their underwear and undershirts, using their clothes as bolsters and blankets to keep Radar positioned on his side and as warm as possible.

Hawkeye looked at her and held out an arm. Houlihan snapped, "Is that all you ever think about?" and curled up, knees to her chest, so he wouldn't see so much of her.

"Not at a time like this," Hawkeye said. She huffed her disbelief. He hunched beside her, checking Radar's pulse and respirations more often than he needed to, tensing each time he reached across the still body, relaxing just a little when the pulse was unchanged. They weren't left at peace for long. A few minutes later, more thumping footsteps were followed by the door slamming open again. 

There were four of them this time. Two had a sort of floating stretcher with them. "The captain wants this one alive," one of them said, gesturing to Radar. Two of them shoved Margaret and Hawkeye aside and picked up Radar with surprising delicacy. They arranged him on the stretcher and took him away while Margaret bit her tongue on her protest and Hawkeye pressed his fist against his teeth.

One of the remaining Klingons hauled Hawkeye to his feet, and the other grabbed Margaret by the arm to do the same. "You come with us," the one holding on to Hawkeye barked, and they were half marched, half dragged down the corridor behind Radar's stretcher until they reached a T-intersection. Radar and his escorts went right, and she and Hawkeye were pulled to the left. She had time enough to wonder whether them saying that the captain wanted Radar alive meant that he wanted him to receive medical treatment, or whether it meant that he no longer needed Hawkeye and Margaret. She suspected the latter.

Weapons lined one wall of the large room they entered. Tables bunched up against two of the other walls. A few Klingons sat or sprawled at the tables, large embossed metal mugs and plates of unappetizing and unidentifiable foodstuffs in front of them. Not unlike the mess tent back at the 4077th, she caught herself thinking.

There was an open space in the middle of the room where two women were fighting with curved two handed blades. Their audience made occasional comments and catcalls, to which they responded in derisive tones. She thought she recognized her interrogator sitting near the door. He stood abruptly and stomped once, hard. The sparring women stopped and turned to face him. "Sit," he told them.

They sauntered over to sit beside each other. One leaned in to share some private joke with the other. Margaret's captor shoved her into the center of the space hard enough to cause her to stumble. Hawkeye followed, hitting the ground and scrambling quickly back to his feet.

"You're not worth the oxygen it takes to keep the two of you breathing," he said. He strode to the wall and selected two daggers, each with a blade as long as Margaret's forearm. He threw one to Margaret. She dodged it and it hit the floor to skitter under the two women's table. The other he dropped at Hawkeye's feet. "Pick them up!" he ordered.

Hawkeye stared at his. Margaret collected hers from under the table. One of the women reached out as she stood to finger her hair. Margaret flipped the dagger around to point it at the woman's chin. The woman slapped her knees and leaned back, laughing. Margaret backed up a couple of steps before turning back around to face Hawkeye, who was pointedly not even looking at the dagger on the ground.

"I only need one of you. You choose."

"Margaret," Hawkeye said. He met her eyes with a slight nod. A grim invitation. She shook her head.

"You value neither your lives nor your honor." He spat on the ground, then, more casually gestured from Margaret to Hawkeye. "Make it entertaining or I'll throw you both in the recycler. Alive."

Hawkeye firmed his jaw and stared him down.

"Have it your way. It's an extremely unpleasant way to die."

"Pick it up, Hawkeye," she said.

"I won't fight you," he said.

She sighed. "Let me guess. You don't even know how to use a dagger."

"And you do?"

She shrugged her affirmation. "Pick it up, they're getting impatient!"

Hawkeye squatted, scooped up the knife, and held it, less clumsily than she expected. Surgeon, she reminded herself. She walked deliberately toward him, the knife held low. "Do what I do."

"I will demonstrate basic combat training in the United States Army," she said, raising her voice and taking on the tone she used when taking her nurses through PT. "Who knows, It might prove useful to you if you take the honorable route instead of bombing cities from orbit." She allowed her voice to take on a derisive, challenging tone. She knew she was only buying time, but a little time might be all they needed, and if she'd given serious offense, they would at least be paying attention to her rather than to Hawkeye.

She took a simple stance. "Hawkeye, stand exactly like this."

He copied her position superficially, but too stiffly to allow himself to move well. "I didn't know they trained nurses to fight."

"You never met my father. Up, keep moving. On your toes like a boxer, but stay out of range of my blade." She took an experimental swipe, not even aiming at him, to gauge the weight of the blade. It had been a long time since she'd practiced with one, back when her father had taken her on a rare hunting trip.

Hawkeye danced around her awkwardly, looking more like a choreographed fighter from a movie than a competent soldier. At least he didn't turn his back on her. 

She circled. "Keep your knife up."

He raised the knife. She couldn't understand anything that was being said by her audience, but if their body language was anything like a human's, they were getting restless. "I'm coming after you. Dodge."

She swiped in his direction again, telegraphing the move so he could move away easily. Even so, she nearly landed the blow. He really wasn't proficient enough to practice with a real blade, his unpredictability a hazard to them both. She pushed aside the knowledge that she couldn't stall forever, but her mind dwelled on the possibilities.

Unless rescue came very, very soon, only one of them would come out of this alive. Unless she deliberately threw herself on his blade, Hawkeye Pierce would not be going home. She took another pretend swipe at him that would fool no one. The Klingons laughed and pointed. "Hey!" Hawkeye complained.

"Hawkeye, you've got to do better."

He skipped left and right, the blade held at the wrong angle. "I don't want to."

"Well, it shows. Come at me."

"No!"

"I said come at me! That's an order, Captain."

He struck clumsily and she dodged. His eyes on her body and his own blade, he swung his free arm wild and caught it on the edge of Margaret's knife. A line of red marked the back of his arm from elbow to just above the wrist.

He backed off after that, circling from a safer distance. She darted in and out while he made a few more halfhearted swipes and their audience began to lose interest. "Human female," the one in charge of this farce said. "Finish that worm now."

Hawkeye looked at the Klingon, wide eyed, and skipped clumsily away from Margaret, who followed him until he was backed up against the one wall without tables. His whole body betrayed his exhaustion. "Are you really going to do this?" he gasped, holding her at bay with the knife held straight out in front of him.

"Only if you pass out. Stay with me, Hawkeye." 

He swallowed and pushed himself up off the wall. She took another swipe at him, calculated to miss, but he stumbled, flung his arms forward to catch himself, and collapsed onto her, the knife blade still held out in front of him.

It felt so much like a punch she didn't realize at first what had happened. Hawkeye pulled away, his eyes huge. "No, no, Margaret," he mouthed without sound. Her shirt was wet with more than just sweat. She tried to inhale, and only then felt a sharp pain and a heaviness in her chest. She looked down to see the hilt of Hawkeye's knife, looked back up into his horrified face, and pitched forward into his arms. Darkness crawled inward toward the center of her vision, then, for a moment, just as she lost consciousness, a scattering of orange-gold stars.

*

He became aware of sound first. A low hum, a little off pitch from what he remembered from the Klingon ship and indistinct voices filled his ears. It smelled faintly of disinfectant. Colors blossomed behind his eyes, moving with the sound of footsteps. He needed to wake up, but he couldn't make himself move.

"Looks like he's regaining consciousness," a woman's voice said.

"Come on, Radar, I know you can do it. Show us those baby blues."

He found his words. "Klinger?"

Radar could hear the smile blossom in Klinger's voice. "In the flesh. How are you feeling?"

Radar opened his eyes for a moment but closed them again against brightness. "What do I do now?" he said.

"You just lie there and rest young man," a woman said. He forced his eyes open. She peered into them. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Corporal Walter Eugene O'Reilly." He turned his head enough to take in the blue-white walls and shiny equipment around him. Klinger stood by his bedside wearing bright blue scrubs. "Am I on another spaceship?"

"That you are, my friend. Hawkeye and Margaret are in surgery."

Surgery. He closed his eyes again. "She's hurt bad." He struggled to remember. "Something I gotta do." He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn't obey him. "Important."

Klinger turned to the nurse. "If he says it's important, it's important."

"Try talking about whatever comes to mind, Corporal O'Reilly. You might shake whatever it is loose." 

"Radar. Name's Radar," he told her. "On account of sometimes I know about stuff. You guys have a word for it, but I can't remember what it is right now. Commander Spock told me." He was on the right track, he was pretty sure. "He told us about these other aliens who might help us. Help Earth. We gotta go to Organia as fast as we can! We gotta get them to stop the Klingons."

"I'll pass your message on to the captain when I see her," the nurse said.

"Please, we gotta go right away so more people don't die." The pretty nurse just kept smiling in that gentle, frustrating way. Klinger turned to her. "Radar knows things before they happen. You should get Captain Una in here."

The nurse studied something Radar couldn't see on the wall above his head. "Well, that explains those readings," she said. "I'll get the Captain."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments build community. I love to hear from everyone.


End file.
